NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — There was outrage Monday from New York City Housing Authority tenants and housing advocates over smoking gun emails that show Mayor Bill de Blasio misleading the public about the extent of lead poisoning in public housing.

The pictures — the layers of paint that fall into the bathtub; a pipe so rusty layers of crud hang off — are emblematic of a lead paint problem in NYCHA apartments that cry out for help.

But new emails released by City Hall show that Mayor de Blasio apparently tried to hide the extent of the problem from the public, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported Monday.

“It’s a mockery of transparency and if you cannot be trusted to tell the truth about something as critical as lead safety then what can you be trusted to tell the truth about?” Bronx City Councilman Ritchie Torres said.

Lead paint inside a NYCHA building (Photo: CBS2)

Torres is furious about the fact that when the lead paint scandal blew up amid disclosures that NYCHA lied about doing inspections, Mayor de Blasio purposely downplayed played it, saying that between 2014 and 2016 “four children in NYCHA tested positive for elevated lead levels.”

But an email sent to “B” — that’s the mayor’s City Hall moniker — from aide Wiley Norvell, who was seen walking into City Hall on Monday, shows that the day before he said there were only four cases Norvell told him there were 202 cases across 133 apartments.

A City Hall spokesperson pointed out that the 202 cases were from a different time period — 2010 to 2015.